Ministry of Education representative Coralanne Childs said at the opening ceremony the 150th was an incredible occasion.
She thanked the tamariki for attending, and reminded them they would be the ones sitting in the front row in 50 years at the 200th/bicentennial celebrations.
For the six principals, the many guests and past pupils attending, she reminded them that the 150th serves to help reconnect with old friends and remind them all of the journey that brought them here today, a journey started by the teachers and community who valued education.
The school opened in 1874 with a roll of 58 children.
The surrounding community later raised enough funds to build a swimming pool which is still in service today.
New classrooms were built in the 1940s and also in the 1970s.
Present Southbrook principal Julie Walls thanked her staff for their help and talked of all the teachers who have gone before them.
She says the school's senior students dug into their history to find an earlier principal had made quite a name for himself riding around Rangiora on a Penny Farthing bicycle - somehow managing to carry his tennis racket and balls without dropping them.
‘‘Over the years the children also found out that more boys than girls attended this school,’’ she says.
Betty Thomas (nee Brick) first went to Southbrook School when she turned five in December 1936.
As the oldest past pupils attending, she and Craig McIntosh cut the commemorative cake with the school's youngest five-year-old, Charlie Ward.
She says initially there were only two classrooms and an old shed.
‘‘When it rained or was cold and windy, we all had to play in that old shed.’’
She says she and her sisters would often pause while walking to school to feed the horses and ponies in the paddocks next door.
‘‘Our father and other fathers used to get to school before us and stoke up the fires so the classrooms were warm enough for us when we got there. They did this voluntarily every day before they went to work.’’
Betty says the headmaster and teachers had to work hard educating the two classrooms.
‘‘We didn’t have the teacher aides the schools have today. They had multiple classes to teach as well as running the school's admin.’’
Betty’s sister Shirley Petschick (nee Brick) says she remembers the fun the sisters had in the pool, feeding the horses and tending the school's gardens, growing a large variety of vegetables to help feed everyone during the war years.
Betty’s other sister June Terrall (nee Brick) recalled the most nauseating memory of going to school was the daily milk drink.
‘‘Everybody had to drink the small cartons of milk, they were horrible because they had been delivered early in the morning and then they sat in a wooden box till lunchtime before we all had to drink the warm, often curdled, milk.
‘‘We all hated drinking it, but later they started giving us fresh apples instead.’’
